Black hole-neutron star collisions

Studying the violent collisions of black holes and neutron stars may soon provide a new measurement of the Universe’s expansion rate, helping to resolve a long-standing dispute, suggests a new simulation study led by researchers at UCL. The new study, published in Physical Review Letters, simulated 25,000 scenarios of black holes and neutron stars colliding, aiming to see how many would likely be detected by instruments on Earth in the mid- to late-2020s. The researchers found that, by 2030, instruments on Earth could sense ripples in space-time caused by up to 3,000 such collisions, and that for around 100 of these events, telescopes would also see accompanying explosions of light. They concluded that this would be enough data to provide a new, completely independent measurement of the Universe’s rate of expansion, precise and reliable enough to confirm or deny the need for new physics.

Lead author Dr Stephen Feeney (UCL Physics & Astronomy) said: “A neutron star is a dead star, created when a very large star explodes and then collapses, and it is incredibly dense – typically 10 miles across but with a mass up to twice that of our Sun. Its collision with a black hole is a cataclysmic event, causing ripples of space-time, known as gravitational waves, that we can now detect on Earth with observatories like LIGO and Virgo. “We have not yet detected light from these collisions. But advances in the sensitivity of equipment detecting gravitational waves, together with new detectors in India and Japan, will lead to a huge leap forward in terms of how many of these types of events we can detect. It is incredibly exciting and should open up a new era for astrophysics.”

To tell how fast the galaxy hosting a collision is moving away, we look at the “redshift” of light – that is, how the wavelength of light produced by a source has been stretched by its motion. Explosions of light that may accompany these collisions would help us pinpoint the galaxy where the collision happened, allowing researchers to combine measurements of distance and measurements of redshift in that galaxy. Dr Feeney said: “Computer models of these cataclysmic events are incomplete, and this study should provide extra motivation to improve them.” Co-author Professor Hiranya Peiris (UCL Physics & Astronomy and Stockholm University) said: “The disagreement over the Hubble constant is one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. In addition to helping us unravel this puzzle, the spacetime ripples from these cataclysmic events open a new window on the universe. We can anticipate many exciting discoveries in the coming decade.”

Source: UCL news release